Noooo!! Burn it all down
Time to fire up that Kiwix hosting that I keep forgetting to make.
Fuck dude, we love Wikipedia, why does every corpo want to ruin good shit :(
Link unreadable for me in Firefox.
Target:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2026-08-02/News_and_notes
“no one will cancel their monthly do-”
I just did. If they want it back, they’ll have to build my trust back. Oh well.
That’s what I did as well.
Voting with one’s wallet is often the only voice that gets heard and listened to, which is why my cancellation was accompanied by an explanation.
Yo wtf. This sounds alarming. Should I stop donating?
Yes it’s a massive grift.
Yes. Negating a voluntary union shows who/what they are. I personally no longer believe they are good guys or that wikimedia is un-compromised truth. It has long been possible for the Epstein class to ‘manage’ certain articles towards what they want to show (I learned about it through the Epstein case). Here, the point is that if ONE article can be manipulated by the ruling class - no matter how - they ALL can, and that’s not worth supporting.
Yeah because there are other reasons to not donate. The donations do not go to wikipedia but to lots of projects of the foundation that you might or might not support. They are also getting way too much money in donations, like an unsustainably large amount. Also they just keep lying in their calls for donations. This is a very controversial topic actually. Lots of community threads about it.
I really never understood how it takes that much to maintain a site created by volunteers
For people interested in some numbers have this user post that has been getting updated every year called “Wikipedia has Cancer”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
Its cool that people are donating, but they are doing it without knowing that the wikimedia foundation is actually receiving like 100 times the amount in donations that it needs to run Wikipedia. All the while the banners say something like “Wikipedia is fucking dying we need more donations NOW”. Yes lots of the other projects of the foundation are probably good and they have more legal and quality control costs now than 20 years ago, but its not thaaat much and its just not what is being communicated to the users. And as this guy has pointed out, there is no such thing as infinite growth, so the question is what happens when that juicy donation income starts dropping? Or what if all the people working at the foundation want to unionize? And now we know…
On the other hand it’s legitimately one of the wonders of the digital world. A communally edited source of knowledge free for all to access. While it’s good to scrutinise foundations and how they are run I’ve not seen anyone propose a better solution so far. The data is freely licensed so forking is possible but it’s not really the technical details that make Wikipedia the resource it is today.
Download it forever, then.
That graph isnt as damning as you think… it means they have a single year of runway at best. ideally net assets should be large enough they can live off the float.
Its not about them hoarding money, its about the seemingly unstoppable growth in expenses. Why are they not trying to stabilize their expenses as a donation dependent foundation? The server costs arent growing and will realistically still be at most a couple million dollars annualy, so why are they spending exponentiall increasing amounts of money on other stuff. Shouldnt they try to build up 10+ years of reserves to ensure wikipedia survives when the money dries up? Because if people stopped donating right now, they would run out of money next year.
Why are they not trying to stabilize their expenses as a donation dependent foundation?
They do? financials are publicly reported. there is a modest increase each year in salaries and infrastructure costs. which can be explained via inflation adjustments. (not saying it is if workers are unionizing) but from the financials only concerning bit are the grants/professional services line items which are entirely discretionary and/or legal.
so why are they spending exponentiall increasing amounts of money on other stuff.
they arent. do you know what ‘exponential’ means?
Shouldnt they try to build up 10+ years of reserves to ensure wikipedia survives when the money dries up?
Thats literally what they’re doing. see graphs net assets.
Because if people stopped donating right now, they would run out of money next year.
so stop. seems like the issue will resolve itself. but the only concerning bit here is admin’s fighting union. not their financials
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“Modest increase” lmao. Literally like ~10% year over year for 20 years.
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The graph is very much exponential. If it had grown linear since 2006, they would have annual expenses of less than 5 million dollars. Recently it has started increasing slightly less fast, but its still increasing at an insane rate.
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The yearly expenses for 2025 were ~190 million dollars. The assets were 300 million. So they have assets to cover expenses for 1.5 years IF their expenses stopped growing.
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Large amounts of money breeds greed. The whole unionbusting thing is obviously a result of the upper management getting a little too comfortable with their reliable income stream.
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Yes, the wmf has so many problems, especially its bloated administration. Also it’s run by US government regime-change agents like Katherine Maher, who steer the site to pro-US viewpoints.
Can I take back a donation? I can’t believe I just gave them money.
